Most people encounter macroeconomics the same way: a headline about inflation, a confusing news segment about interest rate decisions, or a textbook chapter that feels completely disconnected from anything happening in the real world. The concepts exist in one place, the data in another, and the models somewhere else entirely. Nothing talks to anything else.
Macro by Mark is built to fix that. It is a macroeconomics learning and analysis platform that connects official economic indicators, interactive models, release calendars, country profiles, forecasting workflows, and concept explanations in a single connected workspace. The goal is a clear path: start with a question, follow it through theory and real data, and arrive at something you can actually interpret.
The platform was built by Mark Jayson Farol, who describes his own learning journey as one that never fit the standard static-textbook approach. He needed to observe, visualize, and apply. So he built his own tools, and now those tools are available to anyone who wants a clearer path into understanding the economy.
What Macro by Mark Actually Does
An Indicator Library Sourced From Official Agencies
The platform tracks a large official-source data layer: about 5.96 million discoverable economic series, 122 official data agencies with verified rows, 16 committed live providers in the starter catalog, and 250 country or area profile entries. Sources include FRED, BLS, BEA, IMF, World Bank, OECD, Eurostat, and other national and international statistical providers. The goal is not just breadth, but traceability: users can inspect where a series comes from, how it is identified, and how it connects to the broader macro workflow. On indicator detail pages, Macro by Mark surfaces source identity, source agency, source series key, source code when available, geography, frequency, units, allowed transforms, methodology links, revision notes, and provider capability badges. That source transparency matters for students, researchers, and analysts who need to know where the numbers came from before using them in a chart, dashboard, paper, or forecast.
Interactive Models and Macro Concepts
This is where the platform separates itself from a plain data aggregator. Macro by Mark includes guided walkthroughs of models like AD-AS, IS-LM, Solow growth, and the Phillips Curve. These are not static diagrams. The model pages include overview, graph, proof, and comparison surfaces, while related concept pages connect the theory back to indicator references and source-backed data. Visual learners, equation-focused users, and people who just want to pull raw data and run are all accommodated.
Macro Calendar and News Surface
The release calendar tracks upcoming economic events with timestamps, provider labels, and importance labels. FOMC rate decisions, employment reports, CPI releases, and central bank announcements from the ECB, Bank of England, and other official sources are surfaced in one place. The news feed and calendar are designed to help users follow what changed, when it changed, and which indicators or concepts connect to the release.
Dashboards, Watchlists, and Forecasting Labs
Users can build custom dashboards, save indicator watchlists, and set calendar alerts. The Research and Pro tiers add forecasting labs, empirical combination forecasting, journal-grade exports in ZIP, SVG, CSV, and LaTeX formats, and a hosted notebook runner. There is also an API for developers who want to build pipelines on top of the data.
Sofia Tracks an Inflation Shift at 9 PM Before Her Seminar
Sofia is a second-year economics graduate student at a university in Berlin. At 9 PM on a Tuesday, the night before presenting a seminar paper on U.S. inflation dynamics, she realized her chart on Core PCE was pulling from a secondary source with no clear revision history. Her professor was strict about citations. She needed official-source data, quickly, and she needed to connect it to a model.
She opened Macro by Mark, searched for Core PCE in the indicator library, and found the BEA series with source metadata, revision context, and a direct source label. From there, the platform suggested related indicators: Shelter CPI, Core CPI, and the Producer Price Index. She pulled all four into a comparison view. Then she clicked into the Phillips Curve walkthrough in the models section, which sat right next to live data matching her chart.
By 10:30 PM, she had an exportable SVG chart with proper source attribution, a model walkthrough she could reference in her presentation, and a clearer argument about the persistence of services inflation. The seminar went well. The professor asked where she got the source documentation. She sent the indicator page link.
How the Learning-to-Analysis Path Actually Works
Step 1: Ask a Question or Pick an Indicator
Start from the homepage, a search, or a calendar release. The platform is designed so you can enter from any direction, whether that is a concept you want to understand, a country you want to profile, or a data series you already know you need.
Step 2: Connect the Concept to a Model
From any indicator, you can navigate to related macro concepts and interactive model walkthroughs. The connections are built in, not something you have to construct yourself by opening ten browser tabs.
Step 3: Build a View and Track It
Add indicators to a dashboard, set watchlist alerts, and bookmark calendar events. The Research tier adds calendar and watchlist alerts so you get notified when a tracked series updates.
Step 4: Export or Run Forecasts
When you are ready to produce something, export journal-grade charts with source metadata, run forecasting workflows in the lab, or pull data through the API into your own notebooks.
Pricing: Three Tiers With Clear Limits
Macro by Mark offers a free account to get started. Paid plans are structured around depth of access:
- Starter at $9/month: Live World and U.S. aggregate data, all model tabs, 3 dashboards, 25 watchlist items, and Marco AI on Haiku with 250k input tokens per month.
- Research at $29/month: Full official-source catalog, journal-grade exports, 12 dashboards, calendar and watchlist alerts, 1k API reads per month, forecasting labs, and Marco AI on Sonnet.
- Pro at $59/month: 40 dashboards, hosted notebook runner, 10k API reads per month, 1,000 lab runs per 30 days, and higher Marco AI limits on Sonnet.
Enterprise is listed as coming soon, aimed at institutions needing custom API limits, SSO, and licensed-feed review paths.
Who Should Give This a Try
If you are a student trying to make textbook models feel real, a researcher who needs traceable official-source data, an investor tracking global macro conditions, or just someone who hears “Federal Reserve” on the news and wants to actually follow the thread, Macro by Mark is worth spending an hour with. The free account gives you enough to see whether the approach clicks for you. Start at macrobymark.com and follow the thread from wherever your curiosity begins.
